Juno News - The government should leave the internet alone

00:00:00.080 Leftist politicians in Canada think they should choose what we get to see on the internet.

00:00:04.240 I'm Jasmine Moulin and it's time for a reality check.

00:00:14.000 Just before we get started with today's show, a quick announcement from me. Today will be the

00:00:18.640 last episode of this season of reality check. So thank you all so much for your support. I've

00:00:24.000 really enjoyed reading your positive comments about the show. I'm so glad you enjoyed it,

00:00:28.080 but I'm not going anywhere. So stay tuned for what's next with True North. On today's show,

00:00:32.240 we're going to be talking about free speech and the internet because ever since Elon Musk finally

00:00:37.360 took over Twitter, the left has been losing its collective mind. Musk has stated before that he's

00:00:43.680 a quote, free speech absolutist. And this has a lot of leftists worrying that the platform is going to

00:00:49.680 devolve into one for hate speech and vile comments. Now, free speech should be a principle that all

00:00:56.080 Canadians can rally behind. But as of late leftists have decried free speech as just hate speech with

00:01:03.280 impunity. As a result, they argue that the government should curtail or limit freedom of expression in

00:01:08.560 Canada. So to protect the vulnerable, a study from the university of Saskatchewan suggests that there's

00:01:14.880 actually a strong relationship between a person's political perspective and their views on free speech

00:01:20.080 in Canada. The study shows that 98% of left-leaning respondents wanted limits on free speech in Canada.

00:01:28.160 And also left-leaning respondents were far more likely than right-leaning respondents to say that

00:01:34.160 government and corporations should have the power to curtail misinformation and hate speech.

00:01:40.160 So before we get into why this is concerning, perhaps we should take a quick background look at freedom

00:01:45.280 of expression and the concept of hate speech in Canada. In Canada, your freedom of expression is

00:01:50.880 safeguarded by the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms, but there's a catch. The preamble to the

00:01:56.080 charter of rights and freedom states that this freedom is subject to reasonable limits. So you

00:02:01.040 don't have the freedom to express anything you want in Canada because it's technically illegal to say

00:02:06.320 anything that quote willfully promotes hatred. And this is actually a really important distinction

00:02:11.600 between Canada and the US because you might think that we have the same free speech or freedom of

00:02:16.880 expression in Canada and the US, but there's actually quite a big difference between those laws.

00:02:22.320 So in Canada, hate speech is illegal, but in the United States, the first amendment actually protects

00:02:27.920 freedom of speech, including the right to express hateful comments and offensive opinions. As Tristan

00:02:33.520 Hopper points out in the national post, unlike in the US, you can actually go to jail in Canada for

00:02:39.520 saying the wrong thing. All right. So now that we have a bit of a background, just to clear the air

00:02:44.160 on freedom of expression in Canada, there are two current bills before parliament in Canada that are

00:02:49.680 raising alarm bells. The first is bill C-11, and this is a bill that provides the CRTC with the power

00:02:55.840 to regulate online publishing and require streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix to show Canadian

00:03:02.080 content more than they do right now. So this bill actually passed third reading in the house, which means it's

00:03:08.480 passed through, it was voted, it was approved through the house of commons and now it's moved

00:03:12.960 on to the Senate. It moved on actually last month in October. The second bill is bill C-18 and this bill

00:03:20.480 would require tech giants like Facebook and Google to negotiate deals to pay legacy media outlets in

00:03:27.040 order to make their news content available on those platforms. So this bill has passed second reading in

00:03:33.600 the house of commons. And so it's currently before committee still in the house. Unsurprisingly,

00:03:38.800 I think both of these bills are terrible ideas and I'm certainly not alone on this. In fact, Canadian

00:03:44.800 YouTuber, JJ McCullough, I highly recommend looking for some of his content, a quick search on Google or

00:03:51.120 YouTube, you'll find a ton of it, him speaking out against bill C-11. Now he's a successful Canadian

00:03:56.880 YouTuber who has reached a good deal of success without any sort of help from government regulation.

00:04:04.480 And so he offers some really interesting insights into why Canada just simply does not need this

00:04:10.080 legislation. One of the points he makes is that adding CRTC regulation over online content will

00:04:16.480 actually add quite a barrier to entry for any voice, any Canadian creator wanting to launch a YouTube

00:04:23.200 channel. So there's a lot of boxes you have to check, a lot of hoops essentially that you have

00:04:28.160 to jump through to prove the extent of your Canadian-ness. In fact, the idea that we need the

00:04:33.520 government to add all these layers of bureaucracy and get its hand meddling in the YouTube world or 1.00

00:04:40.560 in fact, any online content creation, it's just so ridiculous because right now there are no barriers

00:04:46.800 to entry for Canadian creators. You can sit in your basement and record a YouTube video,

00:04:52.160 pop it up online. And if it's popular, if people enjoy your content, then it will be viewed. There

00:04:57.280 are many, many, many successful Canadian content creators, and they haven't relied on government to

00:05:02.720 reach that level of success. So this law is just simply not needed. And in fact, it would be

00:05:07.440 counterproductive by creating barriers to entry for new creators. Moving on bill C-18, the second bill,

00:05:13.040 which would essentially force the tech giants to pay legacy media for their news coverage.

00:05:17.440 That's obviously a terrible idea and you need look no further than what happened in Australia when the

00:05:22.400 Australian government tried to do this. As the BBC reports, Facebook blocked Australian users from

00:05:28.320 sharing or viewing news content on the platform in response to a proposed law, which would make tech

00:05:33.360 giants pay for news content on those platforms. So essentially the government said to Facebook,

00:05:38.480 you've got to start paying legacy media. They said no and pulled out of that country. And there's

00:05:43.520 nothing to say that they couldn't do the exact same thing here in Canada. So if you're trying to

00:05:47.920 promote Canadian content and Canadian news, well, it's not going to do anyone any favors if Canadians 0.98

00:05:52.960 can't access it on Facebook. So while there are obvious problems with these laws, they're both

00:05:57.680 redundant and counterproductive, they actually reveal some more common problems with leftist thought

00:06:03.360 in general, namely that they're against individual choice. It really should not be that complicated

00:06:08.320 an issue that Canadians should be able to choose what they want to watch online. And it's a bit of an

00:06:12.400 insult to all Canadian creators to suggest that Canadians wouldn't want to choose their content

00:06:17.600 anyway, which they're currently doing, that they need the government to help promote it. Additionally,

00:06:22.160 this shows the leftist propensity to subsidize dying industries. If an industry is dying, there's

00:06:28.720 probably a reason. Maybe it needs to change. Maybe it needs to innovate. There are many successful media

00:06:34.080 companies outside the legacy or traditional media that have been thriving in the same environment,

00:06:39.760 the same time that the legacy media is failing. So instead of the government perpetually asking how

00:06:46.000 it can take more money from taxpayers and give it to the failing legacy media, what they ought to be

00:06:51.120 doing is saying, how can you innovate to perhaps create content that Canadians want to see and want to

00:06:56.480 pay for. But ultimately these bills are about increasing government control over what Canadians can see

00:07:02.640 and the content that we can consume. And that's terrible for Canadian democracy. This show is about

00:07:07.840 debunking leftist myths. So what are some of the leftist myths or the thoughts that underlie these

00:07:14.080 two terrible online censorship bills? The first leftist myth is that freedom of expression is actually

00:07:19.840 just a way to allow for hate speech with impunity. Leftist politicians have argued that online censorship

00:07:25.280 is necessary to protect Canadians against this sort of hate speech. But this is clearly redundant

00:07:31.680 because hate speech is already illegal in Canada. So originally the government claimed that these

00:07:37.120 bills were about combating online harms, but illegal speech, including things like child pornography or

00:07:43.920 terrorism, those sorts of content, those are already illegal in this country. So it really is not clear

00:07:50.480 why this bill is necessary. And leftists tend to be fairly loose surrounding their definitions of what

00:07:56.960 constitutes hate speech. Some would even go so far to argue that anything that's simply offensive

00:08:02.160 is hate speech. And this is really problematic because as Canadian intellectual Dr. Jordan Peterson

00:08:07.840 points out, you have to risk being offensive in order to think. But of course this idea is not new.

00:08:13.440 Take a listen to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

00:08:16.640 But unless you have freedom of discussion over a whole society, you soon cease to have any new ideas.

00:08:24.240 Don't you find that new ideas develop when you can talk about them with other people?

00:08:28.080 If you can't discuss them freely because there is a correct view, you soon cease to have new ideas.

00:08:34.000 Now the interesting thing I think in the Soviet Union is that a good deal of the different views

00:08:40.400 come from people who have to be trained to think in the scientific sphere, because Russia would never 0.98

00:08:46.240 have had some of her achievements. After all, she did get up the first Sputnik, unless she trained people

00:08:51.520 to think in the scientific sphere. Now you can't train them to think in maths and science without

00:08:57.520 having the power for thought and thinking new ideas spilling over. And it's interesting to me, you see,

00:09:04.160 that a lot of your people who've been thinking new political thoughts unwelcome to the regime

00:09:10.720 have often been those who've come from the scientific sphere.

00:09:13.600 Obviously, no mainstream federal politician in Canada would ever be in support of hate speech. The issue,

00:09:20.640 and the real question is, who gets to define what hate speech is? Because there's a real risk,

00:09:26.400 historically we've seen this play out, that politicians or governments can actually end up just

00:09:32.080 labeling a speech that they don't like or that's critical of them as hate speech. Now, while that

00:09:37.840 doesn't sound like something that could happen in Canada, it sounds quite outlandish and not something

00:09:43.200 that would happen in a free and democratic society like the one we live in here in Canada,

00:09:47.120 a lot of Canadians were very concerned when there was the freedom convoy in Ottawa and the prime

00:09:52.880 minister's response was to call people who were criticizing his government's pandemic policy,

00:09:58.160 racist misogynists. Of course, in today's day and age, those labels are likely to get you canceled

00:10:04.240 and being canceled is a really great way to stifle any sort of criticism about your government. Now,

00:10:09.120 the second part of the argument that leftists use to say that freedom of expression should be limited,

00:10:14.320 is that they say that it has to be limited in order to protect vulnerable groups. But historically,

00:10:19.600 the main tool that these groups have used to overcome those hardships is freedom of expression.

00:10:26.080 Freedom of expression has historically helped them to criticize the government suppression and secure

00:10:31.120 rights. So thinking back to 1918 in Canada, when women secured the right to vote, women's suffrage

00:10:36.560 was secured by speaking out loudly and critically of government. And if that sort of expression is

00:10:41.840 suppressed, then obviously those rights can't be won. So freedom of expression really is the best tool

00:10:48.080 against unfair treatment by the government. Next, it's false to assume that you're protecting the

00:10:52.560 vulnerable by suppressing freedom of expression. If these views exist, they're still going to exist

00:10:58.160 whether someone's allowed to say them online or not. The argument could be made that it's better off

00:11:02.720 in sunlight so people can refute these arguments, debate them, have arguments in public,

00:11:08.240 so that the best argument and the best reasoning can win out at the end of the day. If you suppress

00:11:12.960 bad ideas, not only are they more likely to fester, but they're also more likely to grow and gain more

00:11:18.400 attention. Because if the government's drawing attention to them by suppressing them in the first

00:11:22.640 place, then somebody who might not have even been exposed to this bad idea now is attracted to it

00:11:27.760 because they're curious about the government suppression of the information. This idea is explored in

00:11:33.520 Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff's book, The Coddling of the American Mind, how good intentions

00:11:38.560 and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. And they talk about how the coddling of

00:11:44.960 the American mind certainly on the American campus through things like safe spaces, but also in general

00:11:51.280 society through things like censorship by governments is really setting the society up for failure because

00:11:57.760 everybody benefits when ideas are debated in the public square. And so really while government

00:12:03.760 censorship to quote unquote protect the vulnerable might sound like an idea with a good intention,

00:12:09.360 it actually is a bad idea that will be really detrimental in the long run for our country.

00:12:13.680 So to conclude, instead of limiting what Canadians can see and say online, leftist politicians should

00:12:20.000 revive a respect for freedom of expression. Free speech makes our country a better place because it allows us to

00:12:26.640 think and talk about ideas in an open format and really discover which ideas are best. This is

00:12:32.640 critical for any modern day democracy and putting limits on freedom of expression just stifle the

00:12:38.080 process. Worse, it opens the door for potential abuse of these laws. Governments could easily label

00:12:44.240 criticism as hate speech and relegating bad ideas to the darkness doesn't get rid of them. It just allows

00:12:49.520 them to fester and grow even bigger. So here's a reality check. Canadians don't want and don't need the 0.99

00:12:55.760 government to regulate the internet. Bill C11 and C18 are both redundant and counterproductive.

00:13:01.040 Canadians should be able to choose what they want to hear and what they want to see. And in a vibrant

00:13:05.600 democracy such as Canada, the government shouldn't be working on putting up barriers to freedom of

00:13:10.000 expression. Well, that's our final show for the season of reality check. So thank you all so much

00:13:15.120 for tuning in. I'm so glad you liked the show. As I said, I'm not going anywhere. So stick around to see

00:13:20.320 what's next for me with true north. And of course, as always, if you appreciate the work that we do,

00:13:25.520 and you think that it's important to Canada, then please consider making a donation. You can do so

00:13:30.160 at donate.tnc.news. This is Reality Check and I'm Jasmine Molden.

Juno News - November 08, 2022

The government should leave the internet alone

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